


i remember (how we carried on)

by viirago



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 07:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30051687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viirago/pseuds/viirago
Summary: Leta has always been her own worst enemy.
Relationships: Leta Lestrange/Newt Scamander
Kudos: 1





	i remember (how we carried on)

Leta knows two things with absolute certainty. One, she is a Lestrange. Two, she is a murderer.

-

In Hogwarts it was only ever her and Newt, two outcasts (only one by choice) against the rest of the world.

Everyone else looked at Leta and saw tragedy. Her dead brother, her unloving father, _her_.

Newt looked at her and saw a girl. Pretty eyes, dark hair, downturned mouth.

And maybe in the beginning that was all she wanted, to be seen as just another student, just another person. Then she grew up and realised that wasn't quite right either, because she _wasn't_ just another girl. She was Leta Lestrange, and no, that didn't mean darkness and hatred and solitude, but it meant _something._

-

Theseus is everything his brother isn't.

He knows what it means for Leta to be a Lestrange, and what that means to everybody else.

Newt never bothered to listen to what people had to say, ears only attuned to the creatures he chased around everyday. Theseus, on the other hand, heard everything. He worked for the ministry, and he worked for himself, and that meant listening to every seemingly unimportant detail tossed between the mouths of the pureblooded and storing it in his mind under the label 'Just Incase'.

The first time they meet, he already knows all he needs to know about her.

Maybe that is why, when he approaches her anyway, asks her to dinner anyway, despite the rumours and the stories and the real truths hidden underneath, Leta believes it could be love.

-

It's not that easy, of course, being loved.

Even if Leta looks into Theseus' eyes and sees an entire world, even if she listens to Newt speak and hears a song of their future, she pretends she's unaware.

Leta is (a Lestrange, a killer, a Slytherin, a monster-) undeserving. Newt holds her heart so carefully in his hands, his touch as tender as it is with one of his many pets, and Leta cannot stand it. So she chooses Theseus instead, as if there were ever a choice. And it will hurt, every time, she knows, unable to love the Scamander she's with and unable to be with the Scamander she loves, because _this_ (the pain, the regret, the self loathing) is what she deserves.

-

Leta has never made a single right decision in her entire life.

Now, though, as she walks up to death, she thinks she might be able to make one good choice before it's too late.

_I love you._

-

Her story, which should've ended with a sacrifice and two brothers watching on in horror, isn't quite so finished, however.

Life has never gone the way Leta has expected, why should her death be any different?

-

Leta wakes up.

The graveyard is in flames, it is all she can see. Theseus' voice drifts in from the distance, direct but a little shaky, as he ushers out instructions. Newt is behind her, chest to her back, arms around her middle.

_Oh._

Her mind whirls, wondering what her life means now that it's not over, now that she has to continue fighting, now that her secret is out in the open. She murdered her baby brother. She is in love with Newt Scamander. Now they all know, and she's never been more lost.

She looks down at her hands.

Only, there is just one hand now.

-

Healing is a concept completely unknown to Leta.

All her wounds have been open and bleeding since she was a child, only waiting for temporary fixes before they start to bleed yet again.

She is unused to being cared for, not in the straight forward way that Newt does now. He puts his creatures on hold for a while (something completely, _entirely_ unheard of), spending his time fussing after Leta and pushing her into bed when she says _no_ and cooking for her when she says _I'm fine._

Some days she will look down at where her right arm used to be, eyebrows folded in, and he will talk and talk and _talk_ until she is no longer thinking of anything other than getting him to shut up.

Theseus is in the ministry, trying to fix every mess that Grindelwald leaves behind. But he drops by, every once in a while, to make sure that Leta is doing okay, before leaving again. He can never bring himself to stay for long, always remembering how she almost gave up her life for him, and Leta can never bring herself to look at him for more than a second, always remembering how even in what she thought were the last moments of her life, she could not tell him that she loved him and mean it.

 _What now?_ She wonders.

-

She finally, slowly, begins to make peace with being alive.

She adjusts to only using her left hand, to not being able to do half the spells she could when she had her right arm, to _being._

Love is an even harder thing to get used to, but she is progressing there, too. She thought about how she lived her entire life regretting, feeling guilty and ashamed, and thought, _for what?_

Leta does not stop being a monster even though she can barely shoot out a stunner now. She does not stop being undeserving, either. But she learns. She learns that even though those things are true, she can still make Newt happy. She can be in love with him and she can be loud about it and _yes,_ it will feel delightful and at the same time excruciating, and _yes,_ it will be worth it.

Her brother is still dead. She is still a Lestrange.

Newt will still love her all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I finally get around to watching Crimes of Grindelwald and subsequently developed an unhealthy obsession with Leta? Perhaps!
> 
> (Yes, I am bitter about how she died, and how they just used her death as the push that Newt needed to finally 'pick a side' in the war.)


End file.
